this terrified me as a toddler The creepy voices, the way they move & pop up out of nowhere idk how they thought this was appropriate for like 2 year olds!
some girl writing an essay on why it's scary in the youtube comments
Quote:
This scared me as a kid and even now it's making me shiver.
FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO DON'T UNDERSTAND WHY IT'S CREEPY, ALLOW ME TO EXPLAIN:
- Most people are unsettled when graphics change. In things like Courage The Cowardly Dog and Spongebob, this type of scare is utilised a lot. For example, in Spongebob, the characters look cute or ordinary because of simplicity, but occasionally the episode will change to a disturbingly detailed image, sometimes in a completely different animation style. With Courage, it was intentionally scary. The whole show was made to be about scary things, which is why it worked so well. Moments like "You're not perfect" or "King Ramses" or the girl sat in the room with the violin, which are all seen as some of the scariest moments of a scary show, are all done with a few seconds of a different style of animation, like cgi and clay. It works the same in this clip. when everything is 3D, just costumes in real life, it's very odd when there is suddenly something 2D, which brings me onto the second point.
- The way they move. Everything else in this show, moves calmly and playfully, mostly just happy skipping and running, but the bear and lion are different. They don't move. They seem to reach high speeds without using their legs, which is really out of place in this show. A person could not predict what speed it is going to move at or what it's top speed is because we didn't see how it moves it's legs. If an adult can't predict that, imagine what a child would think, especially when children are slower than adults. That brings me to the next point.
-Speed. These things are extremely fast. Their lack of muscle movement means they are unpredictable and could theoretically be faster than any person. The speed they move at varies a lot, which is mostly because of the video being sped up. That makes it even creepier, as it looks very off when things can move at a speed like that. A lot of horror movies use things like motion blur or things being able to crawl or shuffle fast combined with the effect being sped up to add suspense as it is unnatural and surreal. This is also strange with moments like when the lion roars and time suddenly speeds up each time.
- Uncanny Valley: Another thing to mention is that people are terrified of things that seem human, but aren't. For example, I am scared of porcelain dolls. A lot of children brought up on Doctor Who will be scared of shop window dummies because of the autons. The media can expose us to a lot of things like that, like Night of the living doll, or the horror movie "The Boy" that just came out in cinemas. Also, people are often scared of things like humanoid robots, like CB2, geminoid, or scared of clowns or masks. This is all because of uncanny valley, the area of terror that something looks so familiar to our brains that it's uncanny, but yet it's not right. This is because of the fact that humans, especially in the western world, use emotions to understand things. When a mask or make-up obstructs us from seeing an identity or seeing someone's true emotions, we dislike it. Same with things like dummies and dolls: they don't have real emotions, which we dislike. It's the reason police in the US wear sunglasses: so you can't see their eyes which partially disrupts our natural way of communicating and identifying, by looking at the eyes for emotion or eye colour. The reason I talk about this here is because of the eyes on the lion and the bear. The eyes move and dilate like human eyes, yet they lack the ability to express emotion and do not match the creepy smiles of the mouths, which is unbelievably unsettling, especially to a young child who is only trying to begin understanding emotion. Their eyes, mouths, expressions, lack of expressions all just throw everything a child understands about facial reactions and emotions right out the window.
-The eyes. As I just said, the eyes are so lacking of expression that they unnerve people. Also, the lack of eyelids mean that the eyes just stare at you. They way they are painted black also, so they seem vacant and unrealistic, or as a lot of people in the comments put it "Soulless." As mentioned prior, I'm scared by porcelain dolls, because of the eyes that appear to be looking at you, no matter where they are in proportion to you, which is the same problem I have with these animals. Another thing people mentioned was that the bear's eyes are abnormal as they move independently, which is unusual for a human, but creepy on something like this where they stare at you, making it feel like you are being targeted as two eyes are independently staring at you. Double the freakiness.
- Teeth in a black mouth. Not a lot to say as it is what most children would describe as a monster. Lots of sharp teeth in a mouth that has no depth so it looks like the monster could eat you whole. Nightmare fuel for any child.
- Sound. The music that plays is very reminiscent of a horror movie. The long notes and eerie sounds, which is out of place for a children's show like teletubbies, especially when the lion enters. We are yet to see him, but all we know is that he is coming and that he sounds tough, can roar and that he has very slow edgy music. This gruff voice is deep and bellowing and clear, especially compared to the teletubbies themselves. The voices also do not seem to know what emotion they are trying to convey. Its an odd mix of playful, angry, mischievous and enthusiastic, which really do not go together. I doubt there was any direction as the voice actors are stuck between doing a silly or scary performance, making it just feel...off.
- Camera Angles. Most of this show is done from far, full view camera angles, showing the entire bodies of the characters in their landscape and environment. In this scene however, we get some very odd camera angles. For example, the upward from the floor angle followed by the extreme close up on the lion, or the jumping between shots close to then far in the distance of the two animals.
To summarise, in a show for 1-4 year olds that usually involves playful colourful characters skipping and tumbling suddenly stops to add an intense build up of two out of place 2D characters that are fast enough to chase any person and catch them with ease without getting tired as they don't need to use their muscles. They have soulless emotionless eyes, jagged teeth and odd but clear voices. They appear to be staring out the screen at all times when visible, but can hide anywhere and be in unusual places when not visible. To any child, they are ideal under the bed, nightmare-inducing monsters that can appear in places you thought were happy and safe, just to scare and chase you. That is terrifying.
Yes, I think you're entering the tags in your previous post wrong, just put the youtube video ID in there (0AXseEnXtsc) between the tags like this, without the spaces: "[ youtube ]0AXseEnXtsc[ /youtube ]"
Ah, I get what you mean, I totally forgot to do that I was in a rush my apologizes
Courage the Cowardly Dog was the only one that scared the hell out of me, especially since I watched it at night. It was still one of my faves, though.
this terrified me as a toddler The creepy voices, the way they move & pop up out of nowhere idk how they thought this was appropriate for like 2 year olds!
some girl writing an essay on why it's scary in the youtube comments
idk how they thought this was appropriate for like 2 year olds!
